‘When did what happen?’ Reuben says. His gaze swivels to me. It’s open, expectant; only slightly questioning.
‘Let’s see in here,’ Ed says, pulling the door to him. He looks at Reuben, pausing again. ‘His girlfriend?’ Ed queries, a flash of teeth showing as he smiles and frowns, simultaneously, in disbelief.
‘What girlfriend?’ Reuben says.
Ed grabs the basket at the bottom of the cupboard and begins to rifle through it.
It’s playing out in front of me like a horror film, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
‘His girlfriend who died.’
‘Who died?’ Reuben says, looking at Ed. ‘Jo?’ Reuben says to me.
I glance up, and Ed is staring at me, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Those dark, calm eyes. As I meet his gaze, for a moment everything stops.
His hand grasps my coat and begins to pull it out.
Reuben says, ‘That’s it, and those are your shoes!’ and stares at me.
And then Ed raises his eyebrows, just enough. He is telling me something. He is telling me that he knows. No. Not quite that. He is telling me that perhaps he could know. He suspects. He might not know what yet – it is the same as the imagined sirens, the hundreds of times I have lain awake in bed, certain a policeman is raising his hand to ring the doorbell – but he suspects something.
Adrenaline zaps up my arms and down.
Without thinking, I open the door to the office and walk out into the night.
I don’t look behind me.
I don’t turn around.
I’ve got to leave. That’s all I’m thinking. Somebody knows, and I have to leave.
30
Reveal
We have to go in the front door of the Old Bailey, on Old Bailey Street. There’s no other way, Sarah tells me, not unless I’m vulnerable or must remain anonymous. The doors, compared to the building, are surprisingly un-grand, and we push through a dark turnstile and into the foyer.
It’s still early, and it’s quiet around us. Reuben hovers by my side. He looks how I think I should feel; he has trembling hands, a sweaty forehead. His stomach is probably churning. I am nothing, here next to Sarah. I am so at the centre of things that I have become the eye of the storm, sitting calmly in the nucleus. As though, if I don’t think about it, if I disassociate myself enough, whatever happens in that courtroom won’t actually be happening to me.
I have unthinkingly felt the weight of the justice system everywhere since that night: in my daily reports to the police station; in the smell of the prison-issue T-shirt because my chiffon top was taken to forensics; in the lawyer’s office with her Latin phrases. But, here, I feel it more than ever. In the grand, marble architecture, in the sweep of the robes across the courtroom, like something out of Harry Potter; the wigs and the crests and the security guards and the reporters hanging around, trying to get a story.
‘There aren’t any rooms here,’ Sarah says. She raises an eyebrow.
We sit down at a marble table and chairs, right in the centre of the foyer, outside Courtroom Two, and wait.
A man approaches us. He has rimless glasses on, brown eyes, bushy eyebrows, a mop of curls poking out from under his wig, a five o’clock shadow – even though it’s before eight in the morning.
‘I’m Duncan,’ he says, extending a hand to shake mine. It protrudes unexpectedly from his robes. ‘Your barrister.’
It seems absurd to me that I’m only just meeting him, but I’m assured this is how it works.
Reuben is drumming his fingers on the table. It makes a deadened, muffled sound on the marble. They’re like a relic from the past, those hands, even though I’ve been living with them, even though nothing has ostensibly changed between us. But I remember them how they used to be. Before everything changed. The way they played the piano to soothe me, reluctantly; he never liked being talented. The way they would reach, extending towards me, at night. Nostalgia; the worst emotion to feel about a husband.
‘Can I have a word – about the scans?’ the barrister says to Sarah.
She nods, not saying anything. She’s in control, feeling no need to appease him.
He’s brought a case of documents with him. I am not surprised that they are evidently going to discuss my case away from me. It’s the way of it. The whole thing is much bigger than me now. They’re only a few feet away, outside the courtroom door, their heads bent together. He crosses his feet at the ankles and I see a flash of lime-green socks as he scratches one ankle with the toe of the other shoe.
‘I’ll get us some coffees,’ Reuben says.
That doesn’t surprise me, either. He’s bought a thousand coffees during the run-up to this trial. Both when he was involved, and Sarah was questioning him in advance of him being cross-examined, and when he wasn’t. It seems to be something of a role he’s taken on.
The lawyers arrive back, their faces expressionless, and I look up at them like a child.
‘Oh, yes, be good if we could have five minutes, too,’ Duncan says to Reuben as he returns with drinks. His voice is so posh that the words run on together. ‘Take a proof.’
It’s so strange to me that my life has become textualized in this way. The inconsequential phone call I made that night saying I was frightened, that maybe I was being followed. The receiver of that call has become a witness. The events turned into language to be argued over in court, broken down into witness statements and statements of fact and key bits of evidence; the call logs, the corroboration from Laura that Sadiq was in the bar, harassing us. She’s not needed until later in the week. Reuben’s not, either. But perhaps this is the best time to go through things with him; while we are calm, not mid-trial.
Reuben is nodding eagerly at the barrister. He thinks he can sort it. If he testifies well enough, he can change things for the better. As ever. ‘You alright? On your own?’ he says to me over his shoulder.
They walk, only a few feet away again, and I’m left looking at the surroundings. The staircase is made of mock swords instead of balusters. Every other railing points downwards, ending in a sharp tip.
‘Yeah,’ I say, glad of the alone-time.
When you’re in a process as big as this, hardly anybody ever leaves you alone. I’m glad of it, stepping down from main actor to understudy, alone offstage, in the wings. I close my eyes, pretending the foyer is less shabby. It’s an anteroom, perhaps. In the White House. I’ve done something with my life, and I’m waiting for the President. Yes. Perhaps I am his trusted adviser. We’ll eat risotto, the President and I.
I keep my eyes closed, a small smile on my face as I imagine.
31
Conceal
When I eventually arrive home, Reuben is watering the plants on our steps. He uses a watering can, carefully pouring just the right amount into each pot. I should be explaining myself to him, but I’m not. I’ve practically run here, after walking around for hours. Running from Ed. From the police who are surely coming.
‘Where have you been?’ he says, though it doesn’t sound like a question. ‘What was all that? Ed told me when you left … about Wilf.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said it wasn’t true.’
Oh shit. If Ed didn’t know before …
‘It was a stupid lie,’ I mutter, my face flaming.
Reuben’s green eyes widen in shock. ‘Why would you say that?’ he says, and, to my horror, he sounds sympathetic.
He loves me so very much that he’s willing to hear me out about such a fucked-up, dysfunctional lie.
I look through the kitchen window. The tulips are in a vase on the windowsill.